I've seen Caucci's method of hackled spinner wings illustrated in his book Hatches II... two hackles are wrapped traditional style about mid-body forward, and then clipped top and bottom. The finished fly looks real good, but never tried it myself.

I kind of standardized on Krystal Flash for spinner wings years ago after reading an article by one of the Penn State fly-fishing guru's... works extremely well and catches any available light allowing you to track the fly on the water.

These trico spinners are tied on #24 hooks and you can see them quite well out on the water. The pattern floats a lot better than I thought it would too.